The Waltons - Backlot locations - behind the scenes with Judy Norton

welcome back to another segment of behind the scenes of the waltons today i'm talking about some of the locations that we used on the back lot of the studio if you're enjoying these please do like subscribe hit the notification bell and feel free to share it with your friends oh spoilers sorry okay i'm going to be talking about things that uh may kind of uh disillusion you or blow some some senses you have of what went on so if you don't want to know how things were really laid out i'll see you in the next episode but for those of you who'd like to know some of the little secrets behind the way this was all laid out stick with me i'll take you on a little a little tour of the back lot the locations on the back lot were much more condensed than they appeared to be when you saw an episode the house as i have mentioned was just a facade when we worked on the back lot the entire company all of our our drivers everything was towed from stage 26 out to what we called lima road and everything would be parked out there our dressing rooms and equipment trucks and the school house that uh the actual you know cast the walton children where we went to school all of that would get moved all the equipment there'd be like a a caravan a train of these big lights being moved and everything would be would be taken out there wasn't a very far distance but it did take some time to move all of that equipment that would all be parked there from the house when you when you stood and you faced the house to the right of the house was the existing barn set that barn we did shoot interiors and exteriors of next to that was the old sawmill which you saw them work at and that was a functioning sawmill they were able to actually cut wood there although they rarely cut real wood and when i was talking to eric about that he said a lot of times they did things like sanding things and you didn't see as much actual cutting of the lumber but he said ralph had no qualms about doing it and no safety equipment no nothing they were they were pretty brave working with some of that stuff but there you go behind that barn area was the old smokehouse next to it was the chicken coop where we did have chickens i can't remember if the chickens were there all the time or whether they brought the chickens in and out i know some of the other animals like the cow and the and the mule and the peacock they did not stay there on a regular basis they had owners wranglers people who cared for them and when we were going to use them they would be brought in for the day and you know they would be hauled in and they would be used for the day and then they would go back to wherever they lived the rest of the time the front of the house was the section where you saw the grass and the teeter-totter and of course the tree house was over there by the barn as well as you moved past the house towards the shed the shed again was a much smaller actual physical structure uh it didn't get really particularly expanded on for real so when we saw more to the shed it was typically that the interior was being shot on the sound stage so we could see a larger interior in front of the shed was the vegetable garden which will gear actually planted and cared for you continued along that road and you got the section where the new mill was built again that was a usable set they actually were able to cut wood fake wood whatever it was that they were doing in that actual location then if one were to continue past that road as you see occasionally like here when someone drives in it kind of curves around you don't really see where it goes that very shortly went out to a paved road and that was lima street where all of our equipment and our dressing rooms and everything were set and they would put these lights these um on like a tripod there would be a red light and when we went uh when we started filming uh a bell would ring and that red light would come on and it would it would flash it would circle it would flash so anybody coming up along that road would see that a production was actually filming at that moment so they would know to be quiet cut their engines anything like that until there were two bells which meant we were done filming and the red light would go off when we left the house and we headed up this section between the chicken coop and the front yard and you can continue along right around the corner virtually from there was where ike godzi's store was also just a facade you could go in but there was really nothing in there it was even less in there than there was in the in the actual walton house in later years across right across from there was what became jim bob's garage which was built later but early on it was really just an open dirt area and that was when we did things like the ferris wheel uh that episode or things where or the horse race like the thoroughbred those were areas where it was just open dirt and we could have large gatherings you know different carnivals different things were held there uh across where jim bob's garage ended up being you would see some sort of rock formation type things those were mostly fake rocks and in like for instance uh in the ferris wheel you see the man who ultimately gets hit by the ferris wheel you see him up there and kind of hiding something in that area in the wager when we had the horse race you see us ride those horses up and over that area that went up and down into another area and oh and very close to there you were back out on lima road if you went kind of past ike's door and you took a strong right that went out to lima road and there would be a red light there too so both ends of where you could enter our shooting area they would have lights on if you from ikadzi store you had paths that just went down dirt roads and you would see us enter from those directions at times coming from school things like that if we were coming to ikes from the house usually we came along one of those paths when you started down those dirt roads we were in the section we called the jungle it was just basically dirt roads and we could do uh shots with the the truck driving along in the horse race we did we did that and the thoroughbred so various different the motorcycle race all of those type things utilize those sections of road that road also led to drusilla's pond which was only a short distance away down that path and that area where the pond was had a couple of different access points on the other side of the pond there was a little shack sort of a little small house structure that was used for various different locations if you proceeded further through the jungle you would come out the other side again not a terribly long distance and then you would be at the edge of what we called western street so that was where the church was that we utilized at times and then you proceeded on further into western street at times it really just looked like a deserted western street when we would use it it was more set decorated there would be more people more vehicles on the street sometimes you'd see horses or mules or whatever carts because they were actually building a look and building the set decoration for that otherwise it was a set the western street had been used for years on various different locations so there you have some more behind the scenes information about the locations on the backlot of warner brothers studios that we utilized during the filming of the waltons i hope you've enjoyed this segment i'll be back with more behind the scenes of the waltons and more episodes of ask judy thanks for watching

Channel: Judy Norton

Views: 62,514

Keywords: The Waltons, Judy Norton Taylor, Judy Norton, Waltons full episodes, Walton house, Walton locations, Richard Thomas, John Boy Walton, Michael Learned, Olivia Walton, Ralph Waite, John Walton, Will Geer, Ellen Corby, Mary Ellen Walton, Kami Cotler, Elizabeth Walton, Mary McDonough, Jon Walmsley, Eric Scott, David Harper, Walton House, Grandpa Walton, Grandma Walton, youtube, Behind the scenes, 70’s TV, goodnight john boy, the Waltons cast, Earl Hamner Jr, Ask Judy

Id: 13NJ2G0OGyo

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021